Getting on the apps to fight STIs

With help from Arthur Allen (@arthurallen202) and Darius Tahir (@dariustahir)

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Quick Fix

— Getting on the apps to fight STIs: Some dating apps are working with public health researchers to promote sex education and self-testing kits, but the big players have yet to make a move.

— Jayapal presses Google on Ascension deal: The Washington Democrat demanded more information on the tech company’s privacy practices in a letter to top execs last week.

— Escalating tensions between Trump’s top health officials: The CMS head and her boss at HHS are feuding, and even President Donald Trump has gotten involved.

eHealth tweet of the day: Colin Hung @Colin_Hung “Apparently the use of #HIPAA as an excuse NOT to do something isn’t limited to healthcare. @donrucker telling #TopOfMind2020 about a flight attendant who couldn’t page someone on the plane because of HIPAA. @HHSGov#HITsm#HIPAAhumor”

It’s MONDAY at Morning eHealth. What’s on tap this week? Tips go to [email protected]. Reach the rest of the team at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

Driving the Day

FIGHTING STIGMA, APPS HELP USERS GET TESTED — Some public health agencies and advocacy groups are teaming up with the dating apps they’ve blamed for spreading sexually transmitted infections to promote sex education and self-testing kits — though they’re still facing resistance from the largest players.

“We know through research studies that community outreach and health promotion on these sites can work,” Jeffrey Klausner, the former director of STD Prevention and Control Services at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and a researcher at UCLA, told POLITICO. “But some sites don’t want to associate their site with things like HIV or STIs. I think they’re concerned that the brand of their site would be somehow tarnished.”

... Some are trying to change that trend. Health advocacy groups and some popular online dating companies whose users are primarily gay, bisexual and transgender — the populations most at risk for STIs — have forged partnerships to encourage users to get tested and treated, as well as to notify past partners if they may have contracted a disease.

“If you’re a public health provider, you see a gay man for their health care maybe 3 to 4 times a year. But they’re on an app like ours every single day,” said Alex Garner, who heads the health team at Hornet, a social media app for gay men with about 1 million U.S. users and 26 million globally.

... But a key challenge is how to finance these kinds of partnerships; some sites only agree to run paid ads, sometimes in an effort to distance themselves from stigma associated with STIs, Klausner said.

Hornet executives told Morning eHealth that though it runs paid ads from public health groups and pharmaceutical companies, it’s trying out ways to fund its own public health messaging and to even distribute HIV testing kits to users. The company is running a pilot that lets users buy testing kits through the app using cryptocurrency.

Until now, research studies and public health grants have helped subsidize these costs. But “those subsidies are going to go away someday,” Hornet’s Sean Howell told Morning eHealth.

GOOGLE FACES EVEN MORE CONGRESSIONAL SCRUTINY — Rep. Pramila Jayapal is the latest lawmaker to single out Google for its health data privacy practices. Last week the Washington Democrat sent a letter to the company’s top leadership about its data sharing agreement with health system Ascension, amid sharpening concern from patient and privacy advocates over the use of health information.

... Her letter was sparked by a Wall Street Journal report outlining the deal last month, which also triggered an investigation by OCR into the agreement. The two companies have maintained — and many legal experts agree — that the Google-Ascension deal is permissible under HIPAA. But patient advocates voiced concern that HIPAA business associate agreements allow data sharing without explicit consent from patients, and called for changes to that law.

Google’s revenue model, which draws from behavioral advertising, creates “an incentive to commoditize all user information” and “renders the company’s expansion into health services all the more troubling,” Japayal wrote to Larry Page, the former CEO of Google parent company Alphabet; Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai; and Google Cloud’s Tariq Shaukat.

... Other lawmakers rebuked Google earlier this month, with some calling for a law that would require patient consent for such agreements. Many zeroed in on Google’s plans to acquire Fitbit, and some have introduced legislation that would guard against the sale or misuse of data from fitness trackers.

FITBIT SIGNS ON TO GEORGIA MEDICAID PLAN — The fitness tracker company is partnering with WellCare of Georgia’s Medicaid plan to encourage beneficiaries to better manage their chronic conditions, the company announced last week. Beginning in 2020, about 4,000 beneficiaries with type 2 diabetes will be eligible to get a device if they complete an annual diabetic retinal exam; those who sign up will also get educational materials and activity challenges. This is Fibit’s first collaboration with Medicaid, according to the company.

TRUMP PULLED INTO FEUD BETWEEN TOP HEALTH OFFICIALS — The president has personally tried to settle a long-running feud between his two top health appointees, recently telling HHS Secretary Alex Azar to fix his relationship with CMS chief Seema Verma, our colleagues Dan Diamond, Rachana Pradhan and Adam Cancryn report.

Trump and Verma met privately in November amid escalating tensions with Azar; around that time, Trump told Azar to smooth things over, they report. The conversations came shortly before POLITICO first reported on the souring relationship between Azar and Verma, who have warred over policy and personnel. Days after the POLITICO report, Verma also met one-on-one with Vice President Mike Pence, one of her strongest backers in the White House. Axios first reported Trump’s involvement.

POLITICO also reported over the weekend that Verma filed a $47,000 claim with HHS for luxury items, including jewelry and clothing, that were stolen during a work-related trip. The disclosure comes at an awkward time for the CMS chief, who is already under scrutiny for spending on outside communications consultants.

FDA CROWDSOURCES DRUG INFO — Last week FDA launched an app called CURE ID to gather data about the ways clinicians and researchers have used existing FDA-approved drugs to treat difficult-to-treat infectious diseases, the agency said in a release. It’s a collaboration between the FDA and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, a division of NIH.

DEMS URGE FTC TO CLAMP DOWN ON INFLUENCERS — A group of Democratic lawmakers called on the FTC last week to investigate social media influencers targeting kids, our POLITICO Tech colleague Cristiano Lima reports.

... In a letter to FTC Chairman Joe Simons, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) expressed concern about popular online personalities deploying “covert marketing schemes” and “hidden advertisements” to misleadingly profit off children and skirt federal consumer protection laws.

“It is time for the Federal Trade Commission to take aggressive action against these predatory online influencers and their sponsors to send a clear, unequivocal message that the deceptive targeting of children will not be tolerated,” they wrote. They singled out Google-owned YouTube as a platform ripe for potential exploitation by influencers, many of whom have large young followings.

ICYMI: FCC’S NEW $9B FUND FOR RURAL AMERICA — FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced plans last week to invest $9 billion over a decade to boost 5G connectivity in rural America, our POLITICO Tech colleague Madi Bolaños writes.

That money will be allocated through reverse auction. “We must ensure that 5G narrows rather than widens the digital divide and that rural Americans receive the benefits that come from wireless innovation,” Pai said in a statement.

... The fund would replace an earlier pot of FCC subsidies meant to spur the build-out of 4G LTE, known as the Mobility Fund, Madi writes.

PERSONNEL — Mustafa Suleyman, who headed Google’s DeepMind property and was placed on leave from the company earlier this year, has joined Google to work on other AI projects, he announced via Tweet last week.

What We're Reading

— Matthew Buck argues in Washington Monthly that tech companies should keep their noses out of health care.

— Scientists have developed a system to measure age from blood proteins, Andrew Joseph reportsfor Stat.

— Hackensack Meridian’s IT systems experienced major outages last week, the Asbury Park Press reports.